By: Eden Chipperfield, News Writer
On September 27, BC provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, and health minister, Adrian Dix, announced mandatory masking would be re-established in healthcare environments as COVID-19 cases are rising at a rapid rate. Starting October 3, masks became mandatory once again in healthcare settings.
This decision came after the BC government had announced they would remove mandatory masking protocols on April 6, 2023. The public immediately began to voice their concerns. This included an open letter addressed to the BC section of emergency medicine from Protect Our Province (PoP) BC. They pressed physicians who work in BC emergency environments to wear masks for multiple reasons, including protecting themselves, their colleagues in the emergency departments, patients, and visitors. With COVID-19 rising significantly again in the province and the flu season approaching, PoP urged the BC section of emergency medicine to take action. During the week of September 24–30, there were 877 reported cases.
To discuss the contents of the letter and the severity of the situation the province is facing, The Peak connected with Dr. Lyne Filiatrault, a retired emergency physician and a member of PoP, as well as a co-author of the open letter.
Filiatrault explained there are three factors that contribute to the increase in COVID-19 cases: the environment, the host, and the virus. “For environment, we’re congregating indoors. We have not addressed ventilation air filtration. There is no airborne mitigation in any settings right now except now in the green state of the health care,” said Filiatrault. “So our immunity to infection is essentially gone because the vaccine that we have now protects for a shorter duration of time against infection.”
“It’s important to know COVID-19 never went away,” said Filiatrault. She likened COVID-19 particles in the air to wildfire smoke. “The fire might be burning in Kelowna, and yet here, sometimes in New Westminster or Burnaby, you could see the air. There were fine particles in the air.” The particles of wildfire smoke are visible in BC, which Filiatrault used as an analogy to show how even invisible COVID-19 particles can spread throughout the province and affect entire populations.
Filiatrault also stressed that the media is complicit in spreading public health’s messaging that schools were a safe environment. “They were never safe.” Filiatrault explained how, since the return to school, COVID-19 cases have spiked significantly. Children are the “primary, or the index case, for viral transmission in households,” and a major reason why COVID-19 is spreading from family to family. She expressed concern that schools are not addressing “ventilation and air filtration,” as well as children no longer having to wear masks in their classrooms.
The virus constantly evolves into new variants because of the lack of personal protection. Filiatrault addressed vaccination status from the past year: “The vast majority of people were last vaccinated last fall [ . . . ] there was a big rush after we started to vaccinate our seniors in long-term care in assisted living,” she explained. Since then, “nobody has had a booster.
“The clinically extremely vulnerable as well were invited in the spring. So you had the high-risk groups in long-term care, clinically extremely vulnerable, that did get a spring bivalent booster. But the vast majority of British Columbians did not. Our immunity to infection is essentially gone.”
Shortly after the interview with Filiatrault, the BC provincial government announced they will start to send COVID-19 booster invitations this fall. They will begin with “seniors, residents in long-term care facilities, Indigenous peoples, pregnant people, health-care workers and people with chronic health conditions,” before moving onto the general population.
Filiatrault and other members of PoP have called out politicians and health authorities on the lack of response to the worsening situation. “Public health officers across Canada have not followed the signs and have been basically at the mercy of politics, and the politics in each province is dictated by short-term focus. The focus of a politician is reelection in four years.”
The Peak inquired how individuals can protect themselves and access masks during the new wave of COVID-19. Donate a Mask “is a volunteer-run charity that ships free N95 equivalent respirator masks to anyone in Canada who requests them” with a form on their website. Filiatrault also recommended Community Access to Ventilation Information, a group that supports the increased usage of CO2 monitors to monitor air quality. Lastly, they recommended Corsi Rosenthal boxes, which can be built from the home, to help filter the air from airborne particles.
